E3 Thoughts

So, after watching some of the coverage last week, what were my highlights from this year’s E3 offering?

The press conferences by Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft were the usual blend of camp, meme-creating presentations, with a few nuggets of good games thrown in for good measure. Press conferences aside, it was really good to see some more information revealed on Gears of War 3 and Halo: Reach.

You can watch the press conferences in full here (If you can stomach the hype and marketing/PR hyperbole which comes with them, of course):
Nintendo press conference
Sony press conference
Microsoft press conference

Cliff Bleszinski conducted a short interview on IGN’s live coverage and gave a running commentary on a short gameplay segment of Gears 3′s campaign, which, finally, gets 4-player co-op. He also detailed their new co-op mode, called ‘Beast’, which sees players assume the role of the Locust. It should definitely make a nice diversion from Horde, which, if Gears 2 was anything to go by, will be played to death by Team Gash when we get our hands on it!

In a similar vein, Bungie detailed Halo: Reach’s Firefight mode (as well as many other details about the game), which is really sounding like it’s going to be great fun (and we can now turn off those damned Skull modifiers, including the retarded ‘Black Eye’ one…). From my short burst of play through the Reach Beta, I’m definitely looking forward to the final Halo game from Bungie – a lot of my hopes for the series were realised in the Beta, and so things are looking good. Time to book September 14th off of work…

In terms of new tech, Microsoft’s Project Natal finally got rid of the awful name in exchange for (the slightly less-awful) ‘Kinect’. Sony unveiled their ‘Move’ stuff too, although as noted in a previous post, I’m not overly excited about either of them (except for maybe getting the chance to say “Xbox; On!” in a Star Trek manner every time I want to switch it on).

Nintendo managed to wow me with their 3DS though – although without having seen the 3D effect in person, I can’t pass judgement, but I’m sure it’ll be good. I’m just hoping they make the casing more akin to the DS Lite or DSi though. I’ll have to get my sticky paws on one as soon as they’re released!

Of course, I’m not going to harp on too much, lest this post turn into War and Peace – if you want to catch up on this year’s E3, check out some of Eurogamer’s E3 coverage here: http://www.eurogamer.net/e3.

Until next time, game-fans!

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